


Worth It.

by Kirabella



Category: Tommy Ratliff (Musician)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 01:16:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3917773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirabella/pseuds/Kirabella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy Ratliff beginnings. I intend to write through until his dad's death, but usually these things take hold of me and I'm soaring far behind them, so we'll see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worth It.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this way before any of the recent things with Tommy happened. I started writing this as an outlet for my own non-Tommy centric angst. Now that I have that and Tommy-centric angst, we'll see what happens. Most of this is just explanatory leading crap. I will get somewhere eventually.

Tommy never had it easy. He was always too something. Too pasty, too broad, too dark, too vain. He drew into himself early, like a turtle in his shell. Or a porcupine with spikes. Yeah, that was more badass. He was such a fucking porcupine. 

He hadn’t always been though. Maybe it was like caterpillar versus butterfly. Maybe somewhere, in an alternate reality, turtles turned into porcupines and Tommy was the first of the species.

...

When Tommy takes his first drink, he’s 11. He’d just been rejected for the first time at the school dance, and really he should have seen it coming. Tommy isn’t exactly well liked, or a football player, or up on the latest boybands. He is weird. Girls never liked weird. At least, not until weird got cool. But everything ran in cycles and eventually weird would be uncool again. Tommy is stuck in a dryer waiting to be pulled out as a fluffy bath towel instead of a ratty dish towel. He’s getting dizzy. 

His parents aren’t home. They figured he’d be at the dance all night and had taken themselves out. This is fair enough. They never did that anymore. Between their wild child daughter and their weird, nearly anthropophobic son, when would they have the time or headspace? Never, and boy does Tommy hate himself for that. Slowly, he fishes through the bottles in the liquor cabinet after picking the lock that his dad placed on it when Lisa adopted her very Sid Vicious ways. Lisa had taught him that. It’s how he got out of lockers he’d been stuffed into at school. He shuffles quietly, even though he knows there’s no one home and neither of his parents drink often enough to notice what’s missing for months. They’d just think it was Lisa anyway. 

For a moment he just listens to the clink and chink of the bottles as they brush past each other. Like fingers on a fretboard. Tommy dreamed of playing guitar. Guitars were expensive though, and Tommy knows his parents are pretty stretched and doing the best they can. It would help if Lisa wasn’t taking their money. 

Eventually, he chooses something in a weird, twisty shaped bottle with a faded label. He tries to read it but it’s in a language that isn’t his native tongue. Something European, but could never able to tell the difference between Swedish and German. They had too many symbols in their letters and it made his head hurt. The liquid inside is a dirty, thick amber with a pungent smell. He takes a deep breath and holds it for a minute. 

Being drunk is a legal high. The words came to his mind. It was something Lisa said once when eight year old Tommy had been worried after watching her puke her guts out and doing his best to scramble up her back and hold her hair. Her words echoed in his mind. “The sickness is worth it. Worth it, worth it, worth it. 

As the soupy alcohol coats his throat and lands like a brick in his stomach, he feels better. All his heros do this. He wants to be a rockstar someday, guess he better learn to drink like one first right? It isn’t his fault he’s not old enough to get a job and can’t afford his guitar yet. 

Tommy looks at the bottle again. He can see himself in the amber. Like the evil queen’s looking glass. His face is distorted and he can see why girls don’t like it. But this bottle doesn’t have a voice, or a mind, or pretty curves. This bottle has to do his bidding and the son of a bitch will.

The second swallow tastes like strong cough syrup and Tommy sputters a bit. Maybe this is the stuff that was meant to mix with other things. Maybe …. He sets the bottle in front of him on the floor and untangles his weirdly misshapen legs from beneath him. That’s the weirdest thing about him. He’s broad in all the wrong places and skinny in worse ones. He can’t even coordinate himself. What was he thinking? He might have trampled the adorable brunette he’d asked after in an attempt to fit in, with the way his limbs never do what his mind says. With a sigh, he steps to the fridge and pulls it open. The light inside seems a little harsh and flippantly he wonders what that does to the things they consume. There is milk. No. Cranberry juice? No. Orange juice. No. Hmm, maybe Sprite. There’s a little condensation on the bottle. It’s been in there a while and is slippery when he pulls it out. Tommy’s hands are smaller than average and he has to use two. Somehow he manages though, and he sits down again cross legged on the floor. He pours a nip of Sprite in the foreign bottle to take the place of his early sip and watches it react to the cough syrup molasses stuff inside. 

 

Eventually he gets bored of his parents liquor cabinet and starts giving his lunch money to the high schoolers that hang out outside the liquor store. One of them has a fake, and he seems to like Tommy enough that sometimes he’ll go in and buy Tommy a sample bottle from the counter. It’s usually whiskey. Tommy is grateful.

Nothing comes for free, and in the case of Tommy and the older boy it comes in the form of Tommy’s first time. Tommy hadn’t been wrong. The boy did like him. He liked him a lot, and Tommy is so starved for attention that it doesn’t even matter to him that he’s slightly drunk (6 sample bottles in half an hour, and Tommy was only 13.) Or that the boy is older, or that he is going too fast, or that Tommy hasn’t exactly been in the right frame of mind when this proposition came about and he still isn’t sure as his stomach is flush against the cold, slightly scratchy wall --- He still isn’t sure he says yes. But it doesn’t matter.

Boy has a certain Kurt Cobain quality to him. His clothes come from the thrift store on 7th, his hair is matted, his baseball cap looks like it had seven owners. But he is warm. His voice is raspy and ragged, filled with forbidden want. His lips are slimy against the back of Tommy’s neck and he pulls a little too hard on the Tommy’s hair. But he is paying attention to Tommy. Tommy likes the way his name sounds on Not-Cobain’s lips. Like a secret. A whisper. Something only the two of them will ever know about.  
The boy graduates the end of that year and Tommy goes back to stealthily picking through his parents’ cabinets. It dulls the ache. Not-Cobain never loved him and Tommy held no delusions that he had. No one will ever love him. It’s just pliant, willing body heat. Oh, well. 

...

Years passed. Tommy gets more and more afraid of people, and better and better at casual sex. Mostly, it’s all the same. Tommy always bottoms. Various tops always say things they don’t mean. Tommy buys into it for the duration, just to numb himself to the loneliness. And he drinks. He drinks a lot. Sometimes, he accepted drinks for favors. Sometimes he demands them. Sometimes he cries about it. No one ever sees that, though. Fuck that. When the crying jags happen he tries to pull himself back. It never lasts very long. 

Tommy is never a partier. He prefers to drink alone, in isolation, with music on. Occasionally he sings to his bottle. Sad, dark love songs. Things he wrote, Cure songs, Tears for Fears. That’s on the worst nights. Lisa had moves out and his parents stop watching the cabinet. They take the lock off and that’s when Tommy learns real self control. 

Or maybe it switches. Nameless drinking, nameless sex. Girls, boys, walls, mattresses -- and if he thinks about it there was the one time that no one was around and he tried the vacuum but he won’t ever be doing that again. Sometimes he switches back to exclusively drinking. Sometimes it’s both. 

He bulks up and for a while he thinks this is a good thing. He finally gets that first guitar. He starts a band. They have a muddy grunge sound no one really cares for anymore but at least Tommy can make music flow from his fingers. Sometimes he thinks it’s his subtle ode to Not-Cobain that people still don’t know about, but sometimes it’s just because he really loves that whole scene, okay? That’s the year that Kurt dies. By his own hand (or so they say). Tommy’s perceptions shift. He loses weight again. He pours avidly over lyrics and interviews and anything he can ravage from the rubble that the Nirvana legacy has become. He needs to understand. 

His perceptions shift like a kaleidoscope in the coming months. Reverting to his turtle self, wondering why he can’t be loved, wondering why he can’t love. Fuck, he can’t even talk. Tommy has never propositioned anyone. People seem to know this about him and all questions become yes or no. His whole life is a series of nods and shakes. Eventually he grows his hair out to have something to hide behind while executing all this movement. Tommy hates being exposed. 

Graduation arrives. Tommy doesn’t go to any parties. He buys a six. He fucks a girl and a boy and doesn’t call either of them ever again. He just likes the sounds. The thought crosses his mind that if someone just records audio of people that make really good fucking sounds he might never have to fuck again and that would solve even more of his problems. Somehow even though he’s good at it and he likes to lie to himself, Tommy is starting to hate the way people feel during it. Bodies are so angular and they never really fit right. Usually by the time Tommy gets off and/or gets the other person off, it’s not even fun because he has to spend so much time positioning and playing and Jesus fuck. 

Sometimes, he doesn’t know how much longer he can handle this shit. Sometimes he hits the bottle too hard and thinks that maybe he doesn’t have to handle it. Sometimes he hopes he doesn’t wake up again.

...

 

Tommy is better now. He still drinks. He still has nameless, mindless, quick fucks when he needs them, but somehow he’s made it to his late 20’s and life’s not so horrible. He makes his money, he makes sure he can pay his own bills, he spends a little on liquor and a little on horror movies. He buys a ton of music and usually has his precious guitar in his lap when he’s sitting down. 

Still something is missing. There’s just this void. Maybe it’s that he is a void. Fuck, what was he going to do about that? Christ. He reaches for the nearest bottle of whatever, again. 

 

It takes a few years and he’s not happy. He’s not sad, either. But he’s content. Content makes him restless. His whole life is a big shoulder shrug, and he’s never wanted that. Of course, he thinks he probably won’t live to see 30 anyway, so what exactly is the point of getting invested in or being committed to anything? He’s never told this to anyone because it’s not like he wants to die. Sometimes a person just knows, right? 27 club or something. When he really thinks about it, Tommy hasn’t exactly been nice to himself. He’s been careless and reckless, sometimes all at once. That has to do something to a person, like shorten their lifespan or whatever. Is he hoping? Maybe. It’s just all so … listless. For the life of him, he can’t see the point when he has no purpose. 

It’s at the edge of this seemingly endless tunnel of nothing that his cell phone rings and he’s so far in his own head that it sounds like it’s underwater or coming from an old rabbit eared tv. Eventually he realizes that this is the real world and real world people answer phones. Fumbling he picks it up with a soft “Mhm” into the phone. He hates the tone of his real voice and measures it as low as he can when possible. 

“Finally! Son of a bitch!”

Tommy’s eyebrow raises and he sits up a little straighter. “Christie?” he asks, shaking himself awake.

“Yeah! Your cousin out here in Maui. Don’t you ever fucking answer your phone? I’ve been calling you for weeks!”  
Tommy feels his stomach twist in guilt. Well, if she’d been calling for weeks then there can’t have been any sort of emergency but he really should keep in touch with his family. “Sorry,” he mumbles and follows that with a slightly more hopeful “what’s up?” God, just don’t yell at him.

“Have you been watching American Idol?”

Tommy snorts. “Please”

“No really, there’s someone on there you have to see. He’s a fucking mutant and you’d be perfect for him.”

Eyeroll. He’s thankful he’s never really told anyone about his …. exhibitionism. “I’m straight Christie”

She let’s out a long exasperated ‘you idiot’ sigh. “No dumbass. He’s going to be huge and he’s going to need a band. 

“Oh”

“Yeah, oh. Adam Lambert. Don’t Google his name”

“I’ll look him up Christie. Thanks girl.”

“I love you Tommy. Call me once in a while yeah? I miss you”

Tommy misses himself too.

*

As a promise to the only member of his family that ever cared that he wanted to do music, Tommy follows through and steps on a performance of Ring of Fire from a few weeks back. He pushes play and is assaulted by sitars. His nose wrinkles. Sitars? Fuck. But he presses on, knowing Christie has watched this thing a million times and is going to want Cole’s Notes later. He watches. A late 20’s male with two toned hair and really fucking tight silver pants comes out and flows through and around the mic like swirling water in a whirlpool. He opens his mouth and Tommy’s whole body hums with rapture. This guy is good, really good. Tommy’s fingers are itching. God, he wants to play. 

And so he plays. He picks up his guitar on the way back to the couch and plays the whole fucking Cash libary, which takes a really long time and he misses out on sleep before his stupid call centre job the next morning. 

All day at this stupid dead end job he has music running through his head. It’s louder than usual because this time it isn’t dulled by alcohol. There hadn’t been any time when he looked up at the clock and realized he was going to miss the train into the office if he didn’t leave right now, even though his whole body ached for sleep. It sure was nice to have the music loud, though. It drowns out the customers and the beeping and the stupid mouth breather next to him. For a very fleeting moment he muses inwardly that maybe he doesn’t need alcohol. As soon as the thought comes to his mind, a snort comes out of his mouth. He doesn’t know how to function without it. Tommy knows this. He’s just so gone on sleep right now that it’s almost like having a buzz.

He feels like Captain Hook the way that his body reacts to clock ticks as the end of the day nears. His body jerks and his eyebrows bend and sway with each passing second, until 5:00 p.m. comes and he bolts out of his seat like Flash Gordon, absolutely beelining for the exit in a blur. Tommy needs to get home and take out his guitar. He stops on the way only to buy a copy of BackStage the showbiz rag for all the hopefuls that think they’re gonna make it just because they live in L.A. 

Normally, Tommy snickers at those people, because in Bumfuck Asshole town, they were the biggest thing on the planet. Every girl wears a short skirt, does a two-step, stars in Oklahoma!, has a football player boyfriend who wants ten kids and ditches him for her big dream. Every boy looks like Danny fucking Zukko in his knock off classic RayBans and his chiseled jaw decorated with razor burns because he can’t hack this facial hair trend that all the magazines are telling him is a thing. What neither of these aliens realize, is that LA is actually where dreams come to die. You move, you realize you can’t support yourself without a day job, and LA is so over saturated with aliens from Bumfuck that it’s almost impossible to get a day job and even harder to keep one. The aliens become so focused on scraping together enough just to stay that the dream slips away and before they know it they’re forty and still living in that shithole they swore they were only gonna be in for six months 20 years ago. They’re too old, too tired, and too slow.

Thankfully Tommy was never that guy. He played guitar obsessively, but he was also born and raised here so he knew what the scene was and never banked on being a professional. But somehow after hearing two-toned hair mutant man sing on a rigged TV show, Tommy felt a feral need he usually only felt when he hadn’t been laid in ages. He got home, synced the video, and did his best to learn the guitar part the way the freaky sitars were doing it. If you had said this is what he’d being doing today some time last week, he would have laughed and possibly spit in your face. At least he would have given you a lecture about how Cash was the man and no one should fuck with him. Yet, mutant man was hypnotizing, and before he knew it Tommy’s nose was nearly pressed to the screen of his laptop. 

When his stomach finally protested enough that he had to feed himself, Tommy made himself dinner and idly flipped through the magazine he’d purchased. Dance calls, make up artist sittings, acting auditions, nothing saying American Idol runner up seeks mediocre guitar player! Shit. He’d have to call Christie and ask how long the show had been over. For some reason the thought of having missed the call out for musicians wasn’t something Tommy could handle right now.


End file.
